Perceptions of personal and public risk: Dissociable effects on behavior and well-being

When faced with a global threat peoples’ perception of risk guides their response. When danger is to the self as well as to others two risk estimates are generated—to the self and to others. Here, we set out to examine how people’s perceptions of health risk to the self and others are related to their psychological well-being and behavioral response. To that end, we surveyed a large representative sample of Americans facing the COVID-19 pandemic at two times (N1 = 1145, N2 = 683). We found that people perceived their own risk to be relatively low, while estimating the risk to others as relatively high. These risk estimates were differentially associated with psychological well-being and behavior. In particular, perceived personal but not public risk was associated with people’s happiness, while both were predictive of anxiety. In contrast, the tendency to engage in protective behaviors were predicted by peoples’ estimated risk to the population, but not to themselves. This raises the possibility that people were predominantly engaging in protective behaviors for the benefit of others. The findings can inform public policy aimed at protecting people’s psychological well-being and physical health during global threats. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11166-022-09373-0.


Supplementary Figure 1. High sense of control is associated with low risk perception (Time 2).
Beta coefficients from two ordinal logistic regression model predicting (a) perceived relative personal risk (that is "Relative to others of your age and gender do you think you are less/more likely to get COVID-19?"and a logistic regression model predicting (b) perceived public risk (that is " How likely is a person to get COVID-19") in time 2. (a) People with strong sense of control (orange bar) were more likely to perceive relative personal risk as low, as were males, younger individuals, and Republicans. (b) People with strong sense of control (orange bar) were more likely to perceive public risk as low as were Republicans and males. Regressors are ordered from the largest magnitude to the smallest. *p<0.05, **p<0.001, Error Bars SEM.
Perceived relative personal risk, but not perceived public risk, is related to participants' happiness. As in time 1, perceived relative personal risk had a significant negative association with participants' happiness (Beta from a model predicting relative happiness from perceived relative personal risk, perceived public risk and all demographic variables as controls revealed a significant effect for perceived relative personal risk β=-0.298, p=0.011, Supplementary  Figure 2a  Once again, adding "sense of control" into our model revealed that sense of control was the variable most strongly associated with happiness (β=1.59, p<0.001). Once again, this relationship was partially mediated by the sense of control (mediation analysis revealed indirect effect: β=-0. 519,p=0.014,. Once sense of control was statistically accounted for, the relationship between perceived relative personal risk and happiness was reduced to trend level (c': β=-0.225, p=0.071). The reverse mediation was not significant. That is perceived relative personal risk did not mediate the relationship between sense of control and happiness (indirect effect: β=-0.085, p=0.102, Sobel Test: z= 1.637). b. c.
d. e. associated with happiness. These associations are also portrayed in (b & c). Here, the Y and X axis display residuals from the same model, which includes all demographic controls. Clouds represent confidence intervals. (d) Adding sense of control (orange) to the model reveals that sense of control is the strongest factor predicting happiness and reduces the association between perceived relative personal risk and happiness. Indeed, a formal mediation model shows that (e) sense of control mediated the relationship between perceived relative personal risk and happiness. Regressors are ordered from the largest magnitude to the smallest. *p< 0.05, **p<0.001, ***p<0.0001, Error Bars SEM.
Perceived relative personal risk and perceived public risk are related to anxiety. As in time 1, both perceived relative personal risk and perceived public risk were strongly associated with high anxiety (Betas in a model including all demographics, perceived relative personal risk: β=0.384, p=0.002, Supplementary Figure 3a Figure 3f). After accounting for a sense of control perceived personal risk was still related to anxiety (perceived relative personal risk; c': β=0.31, p=0.021) but perceived public risk was not (c': β=0.163, p=0.172). We did not find evidence for the reverse mediation. That is perceived risk did not mediate the relationship between sense of control and anxiety (indirect effect perceived personal risk: -0.044, p=0.42, Sobel Test: z=0.803; perceived public risk: 0.004, p=0.88, Sobel Test: z=0.151).

Supplementary Figure 3. Perception of risk to self and others is associated with anxiety (time 2). (a)
Displayed are the Beta coefficients from a logistic regression model predicting anxiety (STAI scores), which shows that those who report higher perceived relative personal risk (blue) and perceived public risk (red) reported greater anxiety. These associations are also portrayed in (b & c). Here, the Y and X axis display residuals from the same model, which includes all demographic controls. Clouds represent confidence intervals. (d) Adding sense of control (orange) to the model reveals that sense of control is the strongest factor predicting anxiety and reduces the association between perceived relative personal risk and anxiety. Indeed, a formal mediation model shows that (e) sense of control partially mediated the relationship between perceived relative personal risk and anxiety and (f) fully mediated the relationship between public risk and anxiety. Regressors are ordered from the largest magnitude to the smallest. *p<0.05, **p<0.001, ***p<0.0001, Error Bars SEM.
Perceived public risk, but not perceived relative personal risk, is associated with behavioral compliance.
Behavioral compliance was high: 98.2% of participants reported putting effort into social distancing, 93% into frequent hand washing and 77.3% into avoidance of face touching, 96.8% reported they had not visit other people's homes in the last week and 87.7% reported they had not come within 1 meter of people outside their own residence. We found that while perceived public risk was strongly related with behavioral compliance (Beta in a model including perceived relative personal risk, perceived public risk and all demographic controls:  Table S23). The relationship between perceived public risk and behavioral compliance could not be explained by high anxiety alone, as even when we add anxiety into the model the effect of perceived public risk on behavioral compliance remains significant (Betas in a model including perceived relative personal risk, perceived public risk, anxiety and all demographic controls Anxiety: β =-0.238, p=0.716, Perceived public risk: β=0.105, p=0.01, Table S25).

Supplementary Figure 4. Behavioral compliance is associated with perception of public risk, but not relative personal risk (time 2). (a)
Displayed are the Beta coefficients from a logistic regression model predicting behavioral compliance, which shows that those who report higher perceived public risk (red) are more likely to comply. Perceived relative personal risk (blue), however, is not associated with behavioral compliance. These associations are also portrayed in (b & c). Here, the Y and X axis display residuals from the same model, which includes all demographic controls. Clouds represent confidence intervals. (d) Adding sense of control (orange) to the model reveals that sense of control is not related to behavioral compliance. Regressors are ordered from the largest magnitude to the smallest. **p<0.001, Error Bars SEM.
These results suggest that while perceived relative personal risk was related to happiness and anxiety, surprisingly it was not associated with behavioral compliance. Our results for time 2 thereby replicate those of time 1. Effects are thereby robust across times irrespective of phrasing of questions and time periods.
2) The effects of stress are positive and should be utilized. Health Anxiety. Participants were asked to indicate health anxiety on a 5-point Likert Scale from 1 (very inaccurate) to 5 (very accurate): Often I am concerned about diseases I might have.

Non-Conformity.
Participants were asked to indicate conformity on a 5-point Likert Scale from 1 (very strong disagreement) to 5 (very strong agreement): I prefer to make my own way in life rather than find and follow. Social Support and Connectedness. Participants were asked to indicate on a 7-point Likert Scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree): My friends/family give me the support I need. We presented participants with a modified version of the "inclusion of others in the self" scale (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991). Behavioral Economic Tasks. Participants completed a series of established behavioral tasks including a one-shot dictator game (Kahneman, 2016), an intertemporal choice task (Kirby & Maraković, 1996) and a loss aversion task (Rutledge, Skandali, Dayan, & Dolan, 2014). Anxiety about possible implications of COVID-19. Participants indicated how anxious they were on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 100 (very much): a) "Are you anxious about your own health in light of COVID-19?"; b) "Are you anxious about the health of your loved ones in light of COVID-19?"; c) "Are you anxious about dealing with lockdown in your area?"; d) "Are you anxious about the consequence to your income/savings in light of COVID-19?"; e) "Are you anxious about homeschooling in light of COVID-19?"; f) "Are you anxious about not being able to exercise?"; g) "Are you anxious about not having access to food/medicine/other supplies?"; h) "Are you anxious about not being able to socialize?" LOT-R. Participants also completed the Life Orientation Optimism Test (LOT-R, Molina et al., 2013) that measures trait optimism.